


angry cat no red paladin

by leov66



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, if you recognize the reference the title makes i am so sorry, keith and lance are roommates (oh my god theyre rommates), red lion is a kitty, tired grad school student keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 16:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leov66/pseuds/leov66
Summary: Now, Keith’s not exactly a cat guy. He’s not a dog guy, either, and definitely not a people guy, but the meowing is just so sad that he can’t help but look for its source.Keith's life changes (for the better? for the worse? it's hard to say) when a particular kitten crosses paths with him. Featuring: rommate bickering, the Red Lion in kitty form and some niche humour.





	angry cat no red paladin

It starts raining the exact moment Keith gets off the bus because that’s just how life is. Cursing himself under his breath for not even taking a jacket, he makes sure his bag is really shut and hopes no driver decides to splash him while passing by. His phone has long since died and all he’s hoping for is that Lance has gone out already like he was supposed to so that he doesn’t see just how much of a mess Keith is right now. He mentioned something about being out at seven, and it’s already getting late, so maybe there will be silence in the goddamn apartment they share. It’s not that he hates his roommate, absolutely not, they’ve been dealing with each other since junior year in college and managing to tolerate each other, but sometimes there’s something so deeply annoying about Lance that makes Keith literally want to strangle him in his sleep, for example that one time he was up all night studying and Lance (accidentally, but still) spilled coffee on his notes in the morning. Sure, he passed the exam, but that notebook was _expensive_. They didn’t speak for days after that, until the kettle broke and they had to cooperate to get it repaired as soon as possible. 

 

The rain, as usually, feels cold as fuck on his exposed neck (who even wears scarves these days? People who give a shit about their health, that’s who, and Keith _really_ doesn’t fit into that category) and he’s pretty sure he’s gonna pay for this with an at least two-day cold. Meticulously counting the steps it will take him to reach the apartment building, he tries to protect the bag as well as he possibly can, as he has lost most of his notes in a similar situation before. Maybe it’s just time to buy a new one that doesn’t remember his awkward Naruto phase in freshman year of high school. The rain in itself is pretty calming, a stable _pat pat pat_ on the ground, it sounds good. Better than the pounding headache he’s been battling since one a.m. that didn’t go away even when he drank half a bottle of water. 

 

Better than the miserable meowing that suddenly makes itself present. 

 

Now, Keith’s not exactly a cat guy. He’s not a dog guy, either, and _definitely_ not a people guy, but the meowing is just so sad that he can’t help but look for its source. 

 

Looking around himself, he finds a cardboard lying just by the block’s door, strategically placed under the little roof so that the inside remains dry. Inside, there’s a cat. A kitten, to be precise. It looks like it’s seen better days, trembling despite the shitty substitute to a blanket in form of a rag or a dishcloth. There’s no note, the cat has no collar, nothing to help Keith locate its true owner or the reason why it’s here.

 

The cat meows again. Its eyes meet Keith, and something almost like a memory flashes across his mind, a vision of red, a sense of calm, but before he can truly register it, it’s already gone, so vague that he might have imagined it all. 

 

“Hey, baby, why are you here?”, Keith asks, kneeling in front of it with a hint of a smile. “You’re all on your own?” Unsure of himself, he reaches out a little bit, waiting for the kitten to react. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bite him, only smells his hand and bows its head, as if it wanted him to pet it. Who is he to deny a cat some comfort, a thought strikes him, and that’s how he ends up scratching the kitten’s chin until his legs start hurting from all that kneeling. 

 

He arrives at the apartment soaking wet, tired and with a trembling red kitten. Thank God Lance has already gone out, or else he would’ve taken the most miserable photo in existence. Keith makes himself coffee, throws the dripping hoodie on the floor and turns his attention to the cat.

 

“You want some, uh, food?”, he casually asks the cat, as if he was expecting it to jump on the kitchen table and start an inspiring conversation about its preferred brand of wet food. It stares at him like he’s an utter dumbass himself, and there’s almost pity in its stare.

 

“Hey, leave me alone, I don’t exactly have years of experience with animals, okay? Let me see what I’ve got,” Keith says and opens the fridge. It hasn’t exactly got the craziest selection of food, but a quick Google search later he’s opening some canned sardines (they’re Lance’s drunken guilty pleasure) and serving them on a plate like he’s on Masterchef.

 

Monday comes, and Red seems to have made herself at home in a pile of Keith’s dirty clothing. It’s really endearing, but the mere thought of having to clean up all that cat hair makes him tired. Lance stops complaining around Sunday evening and instead begins to bug Keith with ’helpful suggestions’ that aren’t helpful in the slightest. In the same breath, his roommate won’t stop bothering him about the kitty’s name. Apparently ’it’s not creative enough’ and so Lance, the sudden poet in disguise or whatever, keeps coming up with absolutely terrible name ideas that Red doesn’t even remotely react to. The second he goes Kitkat or any other dumb string of letters that he’s proud of putting together, she decides he’s nothing more than an annoying yet unimportant decoration, much to Keith’s amusement. 

 

“You…are aware that you have to take her to the vet? And, like, buy her a bed and food and everything?” he asks, lying on the couch and mindlessly petting Red. She seems to be in the mood for that, purring and nodding her head as he gets a week’s worth of cat hair over his black pants. The simple pleasures in life.

 

“Thank you very much, I’m not an absolute dumbass. Matt volunteers at a clinic somewhere around that Chinese restaurant you ate at once and got a stomach bug.” That’s a nice memory in itself, Lance owes Keith his life to this day. “I’ll text him for help.”

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr: [@euphra-sie](https://euphra-sie.tumblr.com) hit me up


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